January 13
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REPORT FROM THE WALK:
Fandango Near
We love to dance. We started the EarthWalk dancing. We were
at Martin’s in
They play the music of the region in the most true to tradition way imaginable. The girls took us to their house and taught us some of the basic dance steps. You see that big box in the picture? That’s actually a percussion instrument, played by dancing on it! At a fandango, everyone – I mean everyone – has to dance. Our favorite dance was La Bamba. No it’s not a song by Richie Vallie from the 1950’s. It’s actually at least 300 years old. Translated, it means “the shake”. What’s so amazing about it is that there are over 300 sets of lyrics. The way this band played it, the song got faster and faster and went on for over 30 minutes! Half the dancers dropped before it was over. I was told after the dance that the one point in the song where they slowed the pace just a bit, was to sing some special lyrics written for the EarthWalk. They said it was a gesture of great respect. We had so much fun.
Try this link, you might be able to listen to a recording we made of the music. http://www.computercoop.com/labamba.mp3
Senior Genero Takes Us On A Tour To See The Olmec Colossal Heads
A group of us went with Mr. Genero to a place in the country a bit north of our route, where they were digging up the latest of these huge heads.
We sat down near the excavation site to watch. Mr. Genero explained that these 30 ton heads were found mostly be a friend of his named Breiner who is the master of a tool called a rubidium magnetometer. It can measure a change of one part in a million of the earths magnetic field. The dating on these heads shows they are older than anything from the Maya, Aztec, Totlec, or Incan civilizations. Mr. Genero said these people, although we refer to them as the Olmec, did not have a name for themselves. Civilizations after them, respected them like gods. Mainly because of their ability to not only communicate with other animals and their environment, but to even assume the shape of other animals. These large heads, he said, were made as a way of honoring those among them that were able to assume the shape of the jaguar – the most powerful animal in this region.
You can never tell when Mr. Genero is joking. He looked at us and said. “You don’t believe me do you? Do you know that even the archeologist working with these heads call them representatives of were-jaguars.” Someone said, “Yeah, right.” Mr. Genero looked up at the sky. After a few moments he made a bird call. And a crow flew down and landed on a bush right next to us.
There was a ripple, like you see coming off a highway under the heat of the summer sun. And there was Juan. Juan and Genero looked at us with this big eyed surprised look on their faces and then started laughing and laughing, their laughing caused Juan to fart, and that was too much they were both rolling on the ground laughing so hard I though they were going to choke or something. Still laughing, after a while, they pointed at each other and with another ripple, Juan was gone, and the crow flew away, it’s cawing sounding an awful lot like Juan’s laughing.
GETTING CLOSER TO
We’re now about 665 mile short of reaching the
NEWS FROM OMAHAHA
Iggy Iguana has created a great promotional tool for the EarthWalk! http://www.computercoop.com/2006businesscard.pdf It’s like business cards that you can print and cut out and hand out top peope you see while you are out EarthWalking!